500 Posts on Themself – milestone
Themself passed the 500 posts milestone earlier this week. I've been specifically writing for Themself since 5th July 2006, so it has taken me a decade to write 500 posts. That said, the earliest posts date from 1995, but they were originally written for the Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group newsletter Milmud. Of the posts I've written, 15 were slotted in before the real start of the blog. All of those come from other things I'd written for publication elsewhere. Part of the nature of the very early blog posts was that I didn't have a topic in mind, so they're pretty short and random. These days they'd probably turn up as facebook status updates. Back then there wasn't a facebook (or at least I didn't have an account). What really turned up the heat was doing the creative writing course…
Civil Service Live 2016
Yesterday I attended some sessions at Civil Service Live 2016 in the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in central London. The QEIICC is next door to my office, so I didn't spend the whole day there. Some meetings were arranged at the last moment and I missed a couple of sessions. Civil Service Live Civil Service Live is a two day affair in London. There are a number of talks and workshops on a range of themes around sharing best practice across the civil service. There are also display stands for the L&D sides and some key ; In theory I could go back in today and catch what I missed. However my diary for today is pretty full. So I'll just need to hope that some of my colleagues found those interesting and can share the key messages with…
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Media Bias? Or something else? How can we tell?
English: In the political theory of the Overton Window, a new idea fills the window of what the public views as unthinkable, causing the desired idea to shift into the window of what the public views as sensible without the need to explain any benefit of the desired idea. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) We seem to hear allegations of media bias on a regular basis these days. Anytime an interest group isn't getting the glowing coverage they feel that they so richly deserve we hear the shout 'media bias!' The thing is, I don't see much media bias at work. What does Media Bias look like? In the eyes of those that shout about media bias it seems to take these forms: Negative coverage of what their leader or candidate has said Coverage of the opposing point of view Questions about…
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Article 50 – How will we Brexit?
After the referendum there's been a lot of speculation on how we invoke Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon. Article 50 (see below) is the provision for a member state to leave the EU. Article 50 Here is Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. It helps to know what it is before giving an opinion. 1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty…
Education – Using Somme War Diaries
This post is an attempt at education using war diaries to show on what officers did and how that affected casualties at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. This, and its follow ons, was inspired by a Twitter conversation after Friday's post. I was asked about whether other ranks were sacrificed at the Battle of the Somme by officers. It was a form of Alan Clarke's fallacy Lions led by donkeys. Here's the tweet. There are three parts to answering the questions. What did officers do in WW1 battles? What are the relative numbers of officers and other ranks in WW1 infantry battalions? (and how did this change as the battle progressed?) What do the casualties tell us? Method of Education For the first question I went back to my WW1 bookshelves. There are a few relevant tomes. I also drew on…